The Internet has become a tremendous information resource tool. Even more, the Internet is a powerful agent that will transform the way all business is transacted and the way nearly every product and service is created and sold. With countless websites, portals, and information transfer channels proliferating at an extremely rapid rate the ability to hold the Internet users attention becomes critical. It is recognized that convenience and speed alone are not always enough. Today, the consumer is demanding an added comfort level to know that use of the Internet for conducting business is secure and reliable. Internet users who transact business over the Internet are very conscious of these security issues. In the field of on-line Internet transactions a multitude of manufacturing, retail, service companies including financial and legal service industries, health care organizations, municipal organizations and the like are transmitting their important documents over electronic communication channels. These Internet users need to know not only that their transmissions are received, but additionally that these transmissions have not been mis-received, intercepted, interfered or tampered with by outside sources or unintended recipients.
For example, a research division of an automotive company may send confidential engineering drawings for a new product to another group of engineers at another remote site. The company wants to be certain that the drawings only arrive to the intended audience. For this purpose, the company may also desire to insure that those drawings have been securely received for liability reasons. Similarly, health care industries may desire to make a patient's confidential medical records accessible to the patient on-line. However, to do so these health care industries, and other service industries, will likely be subject to impending government regulations regarding confidentiality and privacy issues which require that such information electronically transmitted through the Internet is secure. Such organizations will thus need a means to insure themselves against liability in the event security is breached.
One approach to affording confidentiality and privacy includes using various commercially available security measures for the electronic transmission of data, streaming data, and/or documents over the Internet. One form of such includes encryption software. Another security form includes the use of compression software. Still another security form includes transmitting data over a fast optical portal, thus making the data more difficult to intercept.
Presently, not all Internet users who have to send sensitive material have access to the data security means described above. Often the software packages and/or sophisticated networks necessary to provide the same are cost prohibitive, and in some instances require extensive in-house technical support. Even more, none of the above described mechanisms provide any recourse for failure.
For the reasons stated above, and for other reasons which will be explained and described below organizations and individuals conducting business transactions and sending data, streaming data, and/or documents over the Internet need to insure, bond, and underwrite the security of the transmission and receipt of the same without incurring significant additional costs. A technical application involving systems and methods capable of resolving this need does not currently exist. Creating such systems and methods represents a technical problem to be solved.